ABOUT
WHO THE HELL IS NGARJUNA?
ngarjuna is an electronic musician, music producer and audio engineer in Miami. Known mostly for funky, musical expressions from his modular synthesizers ngarjuna brings together an eclectic musical experience from often seemingly disparate agents. In addition to his solo albums and shows ngarjuna regularly collaborates with guitarist extraordinaire Rich Prewett as the other half of the dynamic duo Gist.
While best known for his modular synthesis ngarjuna is a multi-instrumentalist focusing on synthesizers, keyboards, talkbox/vocoders, vocals and a wide variety of high and low tech noisemaking devices. Also a master of the studio from years of engineering work, ngarjuna utilizes a staple of samples, acoustic sound recordings and sampling manipulation tools for even greater depth and variety.
ngarjuna was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri; it was there that he spent years learning keyboards, guitars, saxophones and vocals. Before leaving Missouri the first collaborations with Rich Prewett began under the band name ‘Hysterical Preservation Society’.
It was also in Missouri that ngarjuna fell in love with audio engineering, moving his studies from Tisch at NYU to Webster University in Webster Groves to learn from legendary producer and engineer Bill Porter (Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison).
Though a devout fan of classic jazz, Bach, hip hop, and Phish shows, to name a few, ngarjuna’s greatest inspiration came when he was introduced to the vibrant records of Roger and Zapp. Troutman’s influence can be felt from the synthesized talkbox vocals to the bouncing basslines.
Various ngarjuna works have been featured on Synthtopia, Discchord, Knobs & Buttons and Matrixsynth to name a few.
In between musical endeavors ngarjuna also works as a professional mixing engineer for film and television, an educator, and a ninja. ngarjuna currently works, gigs and lives in Miami.
WHAT'S WITH YOUR NAME?
The stage name ngarjuna is based on the classical Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. When he first started using that name computer systems were much less robust than today's 64-bit environments; usernames were often truncated to 8 characters.
WHY DON'T YOU CHARGE FOR YOUR MUSIC? DOES THAT MEAN YOU SUCK?
Probably! But there are two overwhelming realities of being an unestablished musician in 201x: 1) discovery, or lack thereof, can be a much bigger impediment to fan building than economics; and 2) people rarely want to pay for unknown music.
Good news: neither ngarjuna nor his 14 children are counting on album sales to survive. So ngarjuna albums are usually available on Bandcamp free of charge.